Development through literacy

The current study draws on Tolchinsky’s (2004, p. 245) definition of literacy, referring “not only to the acquisition of written language skills, but to social literacy, the process by which subjects growing up in a literate community become acquainted with the repertoire of discourse varieties that characterise that community”. Both development theory and empirical research support the notion that literacy plays an integral part of the process of later lexical development, in terms of written input (i.e. reading) and written production. These processes are particularly relevant to the schooling environment in which the current study is situated. Accordingly, this section explores the relationships of both reading and writing to vocabulary development.

Reading

It is widely acknowledged that reading and vocabulary acquisition are inter-related. If we look at child studies, research findings provide considerable evidence of this link. Notably, Nagy, Herman and Anderson’s (1985; 1987) seminal studies show how reading results in vocabulary uptake among primary school age participants, leading to the conclusion that “incidental learning from

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context accounts for a substantial proportion of the vocabulary growth that occurs during the school years” (1985, p. 233). In a similar vein, research has shown longitudinal links between the amount of free reading and vocabulary levels in children (Cunningham & Stanovich 1991; Stanovich & Cunningham 1992). It could be expected that parallel links between reading and vocabulary acquisition continue into adolescence. Indeed, in her book on later language development, Nippold (2006) argues that reading as a source of lexical development becomes increasingly important from late childhood onward. Despite this claim, the link between reading and vocabulary uptake during adolescence has remained largely unexplored. While the present study does not examine this connection directly, it does look into the relationship between reading and vocabulary development as seen by secondary teachers.

Vocabulary uptake through reading has been explored from several perspectives. Nippold (2006) argues that contextual abstraction, the learning of word meanings through clues in their context, is one of the principal ways that vocabulary is learned during later stages of language acquisition, suggesting that adolescents get opportunities for contextual abstraction through wide reading. However, referring to second language contexts, Nation (2007) emphasises that this type of word learning can be a drawn-out process, with multiple exposures necessary to bring about incremental gains. He further adds that successful uptake is sometimes contingent on such factors as the reader’s background knowledge and their reading skills. While we can expect this process to be different for L1 readers in terms of facility of uptake, these factors are likely to apply to contextual abstraction among L1 readers to some degree.

Stanovich and Cunningham (1992) argue that people who frequently read have more efficient language processing mechanisms, with areas such as phonological coding, semantic activation, parsing, and induction of new vocabulary getting practice every time an individual reads. Based on his study of the acquisition of academic words among socioculturally diverse adolescents, Corson (1997) concludes that students who are required to use academic language will benefit from exposure to academic vocabulary through reading: exposure is seen as assisting in developing the nodes in the lexicon that connect morphological and semantic associations with a word, which are called upon when an individual is recalling the meaning or form of a word. Adopting a similar

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view, Townsend et al. (2012) outline the cyclic issue that frequent readers have increased exposure and therefore greater opportunity to acquire new words. On the other hand, those who engage less and may struggle with reading have less exposure, which impacts on reading comprehension and their ability to infer meaning from context. Taken together, the findings discussed in this section suggest the extent to which an individual reads may affect vocabulary acquisition in multiple ways. The following section explores ways in which this may also be the case for writing.

Writing

While it has received less attention, writing has also been seen to provide conditions for development in two key ways. Firstly, the cognitive processes underpinning writing may foster vocabulary development. Tolchinsky (2004) proposes that in freeing language processing from the time pressures experienced in oral language production, writing allows for the development of contemplative linguistic capacity, and analysis of words in isolation. Ravid and Zilberbuch (2003) similarly theorise that the revision, review and rewriting typical of the writing process encourages the retrieval of more advanced vocabulary that may not usually be readily available for use, in turn strengthening their nodes in the mental lexicon.

Secondly, the formality of written register norms may encourage use of more sophisticated vocabulary. As Bar-Ilan and Berman (2007, p. 26) summarise, “written expository text construction represents the hallmark of literate linguistic expression, in terms of structural complexity, lexical density, as well as level of usage or register”, an observation shared by others (Ravid & Berman 2006; Berman & Nir-Sagiv 2007; Townsend et al., 2012). From this, we could postulate that practice in producing written expository texts may result in greater consolidation and ultimately higher levels of use of such advanced language.

Certainly, L2 theory supports this notion, most notably with Swain’s (1985) influential Output Hypothesis, described recently thus: “The output hypothesis claims that the act of producing language (speaking or writing) constitutes, under certain circumstances, part of the process of second language learning” (Swain, 2007, p. 5). Responding to an empirical gap in the literature, Izumi (2002) explored further the relationship between L2 output and awareness of the target language. In finding that linguistic production was more effective than “enhanced input” in terms

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of fostering greater awareness of the target language and cognitive integration of new items, Izumi (2002, p. 570) concluded that “output triggered deeper and more elaborate processing of the form, which led them to establish a more durable memory trace”. A similar view was taken by Wolsey (2010) in his L1 study on vocabulary uptake through academic writing tasks. Positing that “composing may place greater demands on the working memory than reading”, Wolsey (2010) argued that secondary school writing tasks which require complex thinking may also lead to increased use of academic vocabulary. The US-based study analysed five corpora of student writing based on five different academic writing tasks, finding that those tasks requiring more higher-order thinking promoted use of words from the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) as well as increased word length.

Tolchinsky (2004) sees the offline processing of writing as contributing to L1 vocabulary development: “Writing frees language processing from the time pressures characteristic of oral language, so enabling the development of contemplative linguistic capacities - and consideration of… words in isolation”. For example, Bar-Ilan and Berman (2007) see the writing students produce at secondary school as a means through which individuals develop the language of more formal registers. In light of findings which showed more sophisticated vocabulary usage emerging in written expository texts from age 16 onward, Bar-Ilan and Berman (2007, p. 27) conclude that while primary school age children are still preoccupied with “writing as a notational system”, by secondary school, students are developing their understanding of “writing as a special discourse style”. While aiming to conform to written register norms, adolescents develop a more advanced vocabulary repertoire. The present study aims to look more closely at these influences within the schooling context and their relationship to vocabulary development.

2.3.3 Summary

This section has explored conditions for advanced lexical development which occur during the adolescent years, including increased cognitive development, and literacy-related developments. Together, these paint a picture of influences at play in the lexical development process as an individual moves through adolescence. The factors discussed here will be explored further in the qualitative section of the study, to explore to what extent they influence the lexical development

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